In Recovery
by CharlesTheBold
Summary: What would Joan's junior year have been like if she hadn't immediately patched up her relationship with God? AlternateUniverse version of part of the second season. Please Review
1. Disconnected

**IN RECOVERY**

_(Author's Note: For those who have read my other stories on this site, this one is different. It is not part of an imaginary third season, but an alternate version of part of season 2, starting with "Only Connect". I will continue on "JOAN OF ITALIA" along with this story. There will be no contradictions between this story and my Season 3 stories, at least not deliberate ones. They can be regarded as part of the same "history".)_

_(New Note: I made some changes in the week of May 22, 2008, mainly splitting the unwieldy chapter 3 into two, but also offering a stronger reason as to why God would stay "silent" for months)_

_(Disclaimer: I have no business connection with JOAN. My only purpose in writing this story is to have fun and maybe share it)_

**Chapter 1 Disconnected**

_(Author's Note: Fans who have seen "Only Connect" will recognize this chapter as the opening scene of the episode, with Joan's thoughts added in.)_

Shortly before school was to start, Joan finally got permission to go to the park on her own. Even then her father might have instructed one of the park security staff to keep an eye on her, but she didn't care as long as it was unobtrusive. She had been under observation of various types for months.

On the western side of the park, facing the housing projects, she found the playground where she had once played Double Dutch with Casper and her friends. Or had she? That memory was tangled up with her delusion, that she had been going on silly missions for strangers that she thought were messages from God. Casper wasn't around anymore, was she? Had she ever existed?

Joan thought of asking her mother, who had played a role in that memory, if there really had been a girl named Caspar, but decided against it. "They already think you're crazy, Jojo," Judith had once told her. "Don't say anything that will make them think you're crazier."

So instead Joan decided to go to a different part of the park. On the north end was a bridle path, where people rode horses, either their own or mounts rented from the stables across the street. And that sparked another memory, more vivid because unambiguous, and associated with the camp itself.

_During the second weekend they had bussed the girls for the day to an equestrian camp in the same area. The counselors felt that the horses had a calming effect on humans. Even the girls who had no experience riding might get some introductory lessons._

_They were about halfway from the bus to the stables when they caught a whiff of horse dung. Some of the girls complained or joked about it, but the effect on Joan was to send her into a panic attack, something that would undoubtedly lead to merciless teasing later. ("I'm OK -- you're crazy"). But one of the biggest girls seemed to notice Joan's problem, and contrived some excuse for Joan and herself to return to the bus before Joan attracted too much attention._

_By the time she reached the bus Joan had figured out what brought the attack on. A few months before, while she was briefly working for the school annual, a junior girl had won an equestrian competition. Of course the yearbook wanted pictures, and of course the girl wanted to pose with her pet. So Joan had gone out to the girl's house, which had a large backyard where her horse grazed and exercised. Joan was wearing shorts that day, and she thought little of it when she felt a sting on her leg._

_"But it turned out to be a tick, and infected," she explained to the Counselor. "I came down with the Lyme Disease. So when I smelled the horse-doodoo, it all came back." She winced at the baby-talk word; somehow the camp environment encouraged her to act like a child minded by adults. But this Counselor was encouraging. "That stable was filthy."_

_"Very good self-diagnosis, Girardi," said the Counselor. "But a well-kept stable wouldn't have harbored ticks. Your friends were just careless. The camp here has dealt with dozens of horses with no problem."_

_"So it's a phobia. I can't help that."_

_There was the wrong thing to say to a psychologist. "But you can. By exposing yourself to the source of your fear--"_

_"Please don't make me deal with a horse right now! Today is supposed to be fun. Let me just sit here on the bus until everybody gets back."_

_"Well -- all right. But we will make a note."_

_"I'll stay with her," said the other girl._

_Joan turned to the bigger girl who had accompanied her. She was dressed, not just in jeans like Joan and the others, but riding togs. Either she had brought them herself or had had them sent especially for today; either way it meant she had been looking forward to horseback riding. "Thanks for helping out, but don't let me keep you."_

_"No s--," she said, startling Joan slightly. Joan used coarse language when she was angry or annoyed, but using it as a polite reply struck her as odd. " I insist. Otherwise you'll be alone for hours."_

_"I don't even know your name."_

_The other smiled. "My name is Judith."_

It had been intended to make the horse visits a bi-weekly thing, but it didn't work out. The equestrian camp wasn't used to dealing with disturbed teenagers. Joan learned later that one traumatized girl, once in the saddle, seemed to think she was Xena the Warrior Princess and started charging at the other girls, terrifying them and spooking the horses. One girl, a novice, tried to flee on her own horse and nearly fell off. The horse camp decided that they didn't want to deal with possible accidents and liability, and cancelled the future visits. So Joan's horse phobia went uncured, for the absence of any horses to test it with. That was fine with her. She just avoided the bridle path like the plague, and went to the placid southeastern corner of the park, with the shady trees and benches.

"Jane?" called a familiar voice.

She had agreed to meet Adam here. Indeed, the knowledge that Adam would be here to watch over Joan was probably what persuaded her parents to let her come "alone" in the first place. But now the voice, even though saying a single word, aroused vivid memories, in what one of the counselors had called the Proust Effect. She had told Adam about the very delusions that she now wanted to forget. His skepticism was what had caused her to realize how crazy she was. She couldn't deal with this right now, she needed things calm. And so, before Adam could launch into conversation, Joan stated "I made this for you" and held up the lamp.

Adam's expression said everything. He would never utter words to hurt Joan, but he was an instinctive artist, and she could see that by his standards her lamp was crap. Hastily she added: "They had me work in arts and crafts class. Very good therapy for crazy people--". So there it was, the C-word.

"You're not crazy, Jane."

"Not anymore."

Adam made a heroic effort to change the subject, to talk about HIS summer. But unfortunately it seemed to have been utterly boring: one hotel task after another, including unclogging toilets. "I got your letters, Jane," he said, finally hitting on something interesting. "They weren't very many of them--"

"Yeah. They had us keeping a journal everyday, and that used up all my writing skills. I got real sick of myself, trying to tell if I was still crazy."

"So this wasn't just an ordinary summer camp?"

"Gentle Acres? No. Definitely a crazy camp." Joan started talking about Darlene, her original roommate, with her compulsive pulling of her hair. Joan was NOT ready to talk about Judith yet. She started parodying the counselor with all the euphemisms for craziness. When she ended with the words "impaired perception", that seemed to give Adam an idea, or at least a cue for something that had already planned to do.

"I've been thinking about that, Jane," he said, pulling some books out of his knapsack. "You're not the only person who thought she was having visions of God--"

"ADAM!" Joan said in horror, looking around to make sure nobody had overheard. "You're the only one who knows about this. Everybody else in Arcadia just thinks I 'saw people'." Even the psychologist to whom she had described her hallucinations kept quiet about the God side, simply telling her family that she had had hallucinations and needed some treatment.

"But I've been reading up this summer--"

Poor Adam, thinking something must be real if he saw it in print. Joan had worked in a bookstore and knew that there were a lot of weird books floating around. "_Adam_. Please don't bring this up again. I'm normal now. We've got to be on the same page about this, if we're to stay a couple."

"Well--" said Adam, torn between two forms of loyalty to his Jane. "If you say so, Jane."

"I gotta go," Joan said hastily before he could argue again. She looked back at him as she walked away, and as a result nearly collided with a kid who was skateboarding down the paved path.

"Hey, watch it, Jane!" said the kid.

Joan stood in shock. Her hallucinations always started with some stranger addressing her by name. After weeks of being "clean", was she starting to have them again?

But the boy had said "Jane", not "Joan". He must have heard Adam say that name a few seconds earlier. Just a rude kid.

_You gotta pull yourself together_, Joan thought to herself. _You're in control of your life now, not some deity that doesn't exist. Figure out how you're going to manage your life, and stick with it. _

There had to be a way.

TBC


	2. The Way of Science

**IN RECOVERY**

**Chapter 2 THE WAY OF SCIENCE**

_(Author's Note: many of the incidents here were taken straight from ONLY CONNECT and I don't claim to having originated them. My idea was to fit them to an alternate situation where Joan is still in rebellion.)_

One of the nice things about being back home was that she had a room of her own, thanks to the fact that she was the sole daughter of the family. Privacy had always been a problem at the Camp, even at the level of policy. On the one hand, some of the girls had been molested before entering treatment, and needed to feel a sense of control, a piece of their lives that was theirs alone. On the other hand, there was the danger of some disturbed girl trying to hurt or kill herself while alone. The camp's solution was a sort of buddy system: pairing up the girls as roommates and encouraging them to be responsible for each other.

At the first the pairing up was arbitrary, which was how Joan ended up with Darlene and her hair. But after the incident at the horse camp, Joan and Judith asked permission to room together. It was a better match, but it still had its awkwardnesses.

_The first day, Joan showered off in the common bathroom, then headed toward their room carefully wrapped in a big towel. The cots were on opposite sides of the room but with nothing between them -- that was part of the keep-your-eyes-on-each-other principle. Judith was lying on her cot reading a magazine. Joan went to her side of the room, ostentatiously turning her back. Darlene always understood that as a signal not to watch, and Joan assumed the same with Judith._

_Joan dropped the towel and stepped into her pajama pants. Reaching for her top, she accidentally knocked her socks of the bed and they rolled about a foot on the ground. Joan turned to pick them up, and caught sight of Judith staring at her._

_"Were you looking at my ass?" she demanded, holding the pajama top to conceal her breasts._

_"No -- well, yes -- we're best friends, Jojo. I didn't think we kept secrets from each other."_

_"I didn't think the appearance of my butt was a secret worth knowing. Never bothered studying it myself."_

_Nothing came of it, and Joan let it slide. After all, they were both in Crazy Camp, as Judith called it, and could be expected to have quirks. Joan had a stronger sense of modesty than Judith did. Find a common ground and_ _live with it._

Joan shrugged off the memory, climbed into bed, and had a terrible nightmare.

She was driving along in her car, and she saw an old lady trying to cross an intersection up ahead. It was one of the forms that God took in her hallucinations, and it usually had a sweet effect on Joan. But now it filled her with rage: this was her disease, in human form.

Joan hit the accelerator.

"The dream stopped before I actually made impact, thank God, but it was still terrifying," she told Dr. Dan over the phone the next day. It was a Sunday, but the psychologist had agreed to be on call in case of emergency. "Does it mean that I'm capable of killing somebody?"

"I wouldn't be put that violent an interpretation on it, Joan, unless it keeps recurring. The dream seems to represent the attempt of your mind to reject the hallucinations, which is a healthy sign in itself. If the images are violent, it's because your id is in charge during nightmares, without the civilizing impulses of the superego."

"Is there anything I should do?"

"It seems that your main problem is that you are dominated by negative emotions, Joan. You want to reject a way of thought but have nothing to replace it with. Try to find some new interest."

"OK."

-----------------

Joan had signed up for AP Physics this year -- not because she was particularly interested in the subject at the time, but because her friends were all there: Luke, Grace, Adam, Glynis, Friedmann. Except for Friedmann, she thought she could count on them to be tactful about Crazy Camp. And indeed, before class even came around that first day, everybody acted as she had hoped. Friedmann had made a tactless reference to madness, whereupon Grace boxed his right ear and Glynis boxed his left ear. It was nice to have dependable friends.

Ms. Lischak was teaching again this year, and she was still adhering to her philosophy that a little drama wouldn't hurt the learning process. She had apparently come up with a free-form poem to kick off the course.

" What is physics? Physics, my little anthropic coincidences, is everything. Particles, matter,

anti-matter, energy,

fission, fusion,

muons, bosons, quarks,

Neutrinos, anti-neutrinos,

dimensions, determinism, relativity, velocity,

strong force, week force,

chaos, order,

air, fire, water,

love, sex, death,

space, time and God!"

"Will the final be comprehensive?" asked Friedmann. That rather took the wind out of Lischak's sails, but Joan was fascinated by the teacher's account. Here was something positive to get interested in, something that could help her relate to the universe at least as well as a divine "Friend", if not better. And she even had role models. Weren't Luke and Glynis people who found deep meaning in talking about Physics?

She tried to say as much to Glynis after class in the hallway, but the girl's answer was disconcerting. She started off by saying that she was "so psyched about quantum chromodynamics."

"Well, it is kinda hot," said Joan, who had not the foggiest idea what the crummy things were. Adam stared at her. "I'm just trying to take a new approach to school this year. Optimism!"

"The love of science," Glynis went on, "is a bonding experience. Like the Curies, or Voltaire and his mistress." She gazed affectionately at Friedmann, who was getting slugged by Grace at the moment.

Clearly Glynis and Joan were on different planets, and Joan was not sure which one was Venus. So she tried Luke after school.

"Luke, I'd like to learn more about Physics."

"We'll be taking the class all year," he pointed out.

"Yeah, but I want quicker answers."

"Why?"

Joan hesitated, and said: "After what's happened, I need a sense of order in the world." It was the frankest thing that she had said in nearly a year, a year of lying to herself and others about imaginary friends. Luke seemed to detect her sincerity and didn't question her longer. "Could you fetch my pencil off the desk?"

She brought to him, and he started waving it. "Joan, you just did some physics. The pencil was lying on the desk, pulled down by the force of gravity. You instinctively applied just enough force to lift it up, without making it fly off. When you walked back to me, you were keeping your center of gravity over your feet. Otherwise you would have toppled over as you tried to move forward."

"So we can do physics just by using common sense?"

"No, it's a start, but sometimes common sense is wrong. For example, Aristotle thought that moving objects eventually slowed to a stop -- that sounds sensible, doesn't it? But Newton determined that objects ordinarily retain their speed, that the slowing-down effect is due to friction. Only after we understood THAT, could we start building cars and planes and things. It even affected theology. Until Newton came along philosophers claimed that God must exist, in order to keep the Universe in motion. Now that argument doesn't apply. God may still exist, but you can't prove it from mechanics. That's what physics is for: finding out the real rules behind everything."

"'The real rules behind everything'" repeated Joan. Not a quirky divinity that kept changing his appearance and dropping bizarre hints. "I like that."

The cell phone rang, and Luke picked it up. "Hello -- well, yes, I'm talking to a girl, but it's Joan, she doesn't count. I mean, she's my sister," he added as Joan glared at him. He motioned for Joan to leave the room, which she did with a smirk. It sounded like Luke had a new girlfriend, and a fussy one at that.

The next day, Joan went to her old bookstore, to buy a physics tome that Luke had recommended. Sammy handled the transaction himself. "You haven't said whether you want your old job back," he said unexpectedly.

"I thought you found a replacement for me."

"College student. Went back to school a couple of weeks ago. So, do you want it?"

"You know that I've been -- ill, don't you?" She felt it was better to bring that up front. Otherwise Sammy would be holding it over her head all year. This way she could say "I told you, and you said it was all right."

"It's all right," said Sammy. He peered at her, and she got the impression that he knew about the stay in crazy camp. Why would he have bothered to keep that much in touch with an ex-employee? "You don't talk to rabbits, do you?"

"Um, no."

"Or think they're talking to you?"

"No."

"Then you're hired."

By the time that "interview" was over, Joan was wondering whether Sammy needed a rest in Crazy Camp.

She got her book, but between bookstore duties and school, she did not have a chance to even look at it until the weekend. By then she was determined to enjoy it. She went to the park, stretched out on the grass in comfortable jeans, and thumbed through it.

"'Unified Field Theory, the Theory of Everything'," she muttered to herself, looking at a later chapter in the Table of Contents. "That sounds so cool." Actually Joan understood little about the idea. What was important was that it seemed to explain everything without referring to God, and that she would grasp it if she studied enough.

"It's unified because I created the Universe as a single work of art," said a familiar squeaky voice.

Joan looked up and found herself beholding Little Girl God.

_No,_ she reminded herself. _It's just a neighborhood kid on whom I projected my fantasies, and who would probably be frightened and bewildered at the role she had played in my life, if she even understood it._

"Magnetism, electricity, electrons, protons," recited the little girl. "They're all the same thing looked at differently. My point of view looks at them in far more ways than humans could, but I can still see the underlying unity."

"I'm not really talking to you," Joan said firmly.

"Then you're talking to yourself," countered the little girl.

"You can't tell me anything I don't know, because you just came out of my imagination," insisted Joan. "I'm not going to pay any attention to you."

"Yeah, good luck with that," said the girl with eerily adult irony. She ran off and started chasing a ball, which had a frightening resemblance to Earth as seen in the moon pictures. She even managed to incorporate her wave into a paddling maneuvre.

Later Joan rationalized the encounter to herself. Lying down in the warm sun, she had fallen asleep, and her concerns about science and God had gotten mixed together in a dream. Right.

Joan had agreed to work in the bookstore Sunday morning. Customers were low, and she and Sammy could take inventory. But on this very first Sunday they were interrupted by a woman in pajamas and straggly hair, who charged through the door with a red-stained cardboard box cradled in her arms. "Sammy, we need to talk."

Sammy looked horrified. "Not now, dear. You need to get dressed."

"I AM dressed. Don't change the subject. You've always been jealous of me and Lucinda, just because we had a special relationship."

"Lucinda is just a RABBIT," insisted Sammy, getting flustered at having his personal problems acted out in front of an audience. "Rabbits don't get in relationships; they don't talk to people."

"She's just a rabbit, is she? Well, take a look. She's not a rabbit anymore!" And with that she dumped a dead animal onto the top of the bookshelf. Joan felt sick.

"Is it better now, Sammy?" wailed the madwoman. "Look what you made me do! Did you think we'd get back together once Lucinda was out of the way?"

Sammy could clearly take the humiliation no longer. Joan felt very sorry for him, forgiving all of the snarky remarks he had given her during the year. She realized now that they were a desperate attempt to keep some control over a tragically flawed life. "Out! Everybody out! This store is closed!"

Joan and the handful of customers raced for the exit. Joan had the presence of mind to let the patrons out first, though she couldn't bring herself to say "Thank you for visiting---"

------

"Why can't they cure her?" she asked Luke afterward. "If science is so great--"

"There's just some things we haven't learned yet, Joan."

"I guess psychology is less an exact science as physics."

"Oh, physics isn't that cut and dried. There's the Uncertainty Principle underlying everything."

"But what about the Unified Field Theory?"

"Actually, there are four Unified Field Theories. Scientists don't have enough information to tell which one is right. But that's where the sense of adventure comes in. We have intellectual challenges before us."

Joan wasn't feeling adventurous. All she could tell was that she had tried to replace her God delusion with a fascination with science, and it hadn't worked. Science couldn't give her the certainties she wanted.

She was still brooding on that the next day when she heard a familiar loud female voice in the school corridor say, "You say his name is Price? So what's his price, for looking the other way when something goes wrong?"

Joan froze, in relief and astonishment.

It was Judith.

TBC


	3. The Way of Hero Worship

**Chapter 3 The Way of Hero-Worship**

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: As in previous chapters, I'm reusing scenes from the TV series, in this case THE CAT and THE ELECTION; the difference being in Joan's attitude, and extra information about Judith)_

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: Lars' sudden improvement after the election wasn't from the JOAN episode, but from a similar story in the first season of VERONICA MARS)_

"Jojo? Jojo!" exclaimed Judith on catching sight of her friend. The two hugged each other. Judith even made as if she was going to give Joan a peck on the cheek, but Joan drew back. A good-night kiss in the privacy of the room at camp was one thing, but here they were in a school hallway filled with gossipy girls. Joan covered by saying, "I didn't know that you were in Arcadia."

"Yeah, my parents moved here last month," Judith said vaguely, though Joan got a definite sense of _I don't want to talk about it_. It was Judith's turn to want to change the subject, and she found a good excuse, "Ah, you must be Adam. I'm Judith Montgomery."

"Yeah, Jane's told me a lot about you."

Joan had -- though not everything.

"'Jane'," repeated Judith in a delighted tone. "I call her JoJo. And some of the girls at camp called us "Joanith" because we were together so much."

_When they weren't calling us nastier things_, recalled Joan.

"I want you to meet my other friends, too," said Joan with joy. Her earlier depression was gone. If she had to forget her imaginary relationship with God, she had a real human relationship as compensation.

--

That night was one of the evenings where Will insisted on cooking. He was slow (not because he was bad at it, but because his recipes took time) and his wife took the opportunity to go though the mail.

"Oh!" she said. "My Aunt Olive is back in the States."

"The world traveler?" asked Will with a hint of irony.

"Right. She says that she needs a rest, but her apartment in Manhattan is sub-let. Wants to know if she can stay with us. She said she'd pay, of course."

"Of course NOT," said Will. "We can't charge for hospitality!"

"But she's loaded, Dad," remarked Kevin. "And we're -- NOT."

Luke approached the question mathematically. "If you take X dollars from a millionaire and transfer it to a pauper, the proportional positive effect on the pauper is greater than the negative effect on the millionaire--"

"We're not paupers, Luke," interrupted Will.

Joan let them argue about the money. She was simply curious to see Aunt Olive. Almost all of her life she had heard of the eccentric woman travelling in exotic foreign parts, while Joan's most recent foray from home had been to a Crazy Camp.

--

The bookstore matter worked itself out over the next week. Sammy, needing both money and time to deal with his mentally ill wife, decided to sell the store to his cousin. Confusingly, the cousin was also named Sammy, both having been named for a beloved ancestor named Samuel Something. Joan didn't know how the family handled the confusion in names, but to her they were Sammy I and Sammy II.

The big difference was in management style. While Sammy I had been a control freak who kept micro-managing Joan, his cousin was a largely absentee owner who left all his work to Joan and her counterparts on other shifts. That was fine with Joan, who felt she had enough experience over the past year to function on her own, and no longer had to put up with her boss's carping.

At school she had hoped that her new friend Judith would join her old circle of friends, but somehow that did not seem to be working. Judith's extrovert style did not appeal to Adam, Glynis, or Luke, nor did she share their interests in science or art. They just tolerated her for Joan's sake, and Judith seemed to have the same attitude toward them.

The two big surprises were Friedman and Grace. Friedman seemed positively bowled over by Judith, though his feelings were not reciprocated. Lacking any poetical skill himself, but possessing a photographic memory, he wooed her with poems that he read.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Joan heard him ask Judith one day.

"Please don't."

"Let thee not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments."

"I need some impediments right now."

And Judith found them. After one quotation too much, she told Friedman that she would go on a date with him if he could memorize the whole of Hamlet. To Judith it seemed an impossible task, but to Friedman it was a challenge to his memory skills, and so he bought a copy of Hamlet from Joan's bookstore and started devouring it.

Grace was the bigger surprise, and Joan actually spoke to her about it.

"I thought you and Judith would hit it off--"

"Hit is the operative word," said Grace.

"-- you have so much in common. Both of you free spirits who don't knuckle down to authority--"

"Girardi, if I defy authority it's usually because it doesn't deserve my obedience. Whereas your Judith is just out for herself."

"She isn't! She's capable of self-sacrifice--" Joan remembered an incident around week 5 of Crazy Camp.

_An afternoon of swimming had had to be cancelled due to a thunderstorm with lightning. After the storm had subsided, many of the girls asked permission to swim after supper that evening, but the camp counselors turned it down on the grounds that the professional lifeguard had to be away that evening._

_Some of the girls, including Judith, decided that they would sneak over to the swimming pool after dark and have their swim anyway, taking turns playing at lifeguard. Joan refused to go along, but she also agreed not to snitch on them._

_As she heard the story later, the lifeguard/watchgirl saw counselors approaching and warned the other swimmers. One, a highly-strung girl, suffered a panic attack and started floundering in the pool. As the others scattered, Judith jumped in the water and managed to pull the girl to safety before she could drown. The two of them were caught at the poolside._

_Joan found out when a counselor and a dripping Judith appeared at her room. _

_"Pick up your pajamas, Montgomery, and change in the shower room. You're banned from swimming from the rest of the summer. And to make sure you don't disobey, I want you to surrender your swimsuit after you've changed."_

_"You can't do this! The swimsuit is my property!"_

_"To be precise, it's your parents' property. Do you want us to tell them why we've confiscated it?"_

_Judith stomped out, muttering "bitch". The counselor ignored that, turned to Joan, and grounded her from TV privileges for a couple of days for not keeping an eye on her "buddy". _

"And nobody else got punished at all," Joan explained to Grace after telling her the story. "Judith was penalized because she showed responsibility during a crisis."

"Of her own making," Grace replied. "I may not like authority in general, but posting a lifeguard to protect some crazy bimbos sounds like a good idea to me."

"Are you saying that I'm a crazy bimbo?"

"No, because you had the sense not to get involved."

Grace simply couldn't understand how wearying the counselors' meddling in their heads could be, and how a girl who defied it could appear a hero.

--

Aunt Olive arrived about two weeks after school started, and immediately impressed Joan as the most impressive grownup she had ever met, outside her fantasies. She listened with fascination to her great-aunt's stories of exotic places in the world. The farthest she had ever managed to get was Crazy Camp. And it occurred to her that her imaginary God-friend, who supposedly had the whole world in his hands, had never deigned to discuss what he saw. "He" had been limited by Joan's imagination.

"Then there's Petra, the ancient city in the Arabian desert, surrounded by hills. So cut off that even now the only way to get in is to fly in by helicopter, or ride in on a horse or donkey."

"You can't drive to it?" asked Joan, remembering her horse phobia.

"No, the path through the mountains is too narrow and too rough. And that adds to the charm of it. The visitors ride through the ravine, leaving modern civilization behind, seeing nothing but rock walls -- then it opens up and you're in an ancient city, as if you've made a passage to another world.

"Then there was Machu Picchu, on a fertile mountain instead of a desert valley, and even more alien, because that was a New World culture. The air is thin, nearly two miles above sea level, and that gives it a dreamy air--"

--

After school had been in session for a month, it was time to elect a new president of the student body. The most colorful candidate was Elizabeth Groetzman of the school drama club, who rewrote various patriotic tunes as campaign songs and performed them in the hallways. But she was a junior, in Joan's own class, and the president was traditionally a senior.

The big contest was between Brian Beaumont, who had edited the school yearbook last spring, and Lars Klosterman, quarterback for the football team. At first Joan decided to ignore the election. She had disliked the football players ever since one of them knocked up a cheerleader the previous year and refused to take public responsibility. For Brian she had a specific dislike, since he had fired her from the yearbook staff the previous year. Somewhat irrationally, she also blamed Brian for her Lyme Disease, though he could scarcely have known what would happen when he assigned her to interview the equestrienne. But then an incident came up that changed her mind.

Grace found a band of football players putting up Lars posters, and couldn't resist making some satirical remarks about jocks. They had thrown her against a wall, saying that they didn't pick on girls but Grace scarcely qualified. Luke tried to intervene and got thrown against the opposite wall.

Neither were badly hurt -- indeed, they seemed to take pride in standing up to bullies -- but it threw Joan and all of her friends into the Beaumont camp.

--

They went to one of Brian's strategy sessions and found that, instead of engaging in the strategy, he was already looking forward to having won the election and discussed an agenda.

"Price and the others assume that everybody is college-bound, and has set up all these AP courses," said Brian.

"That's commendable, but it freezes out people who plan to work immediately after high school. Some of them may be dropping out now. We need a program for them."

"What sort of program?" asked Luke, though if anybody in the school was college-bound, he was.

"It would depend on the vocation, but the general idea is to encourage local businesses to create part-time jobs for students, and for the school to allow time off for the work, as legitimate preparation toward adulthood".

Suddenly Joan found herself looking at Brian in a new way. Last spring she had thought herself the special friend of God, being groomed for a glorious destiny. Now she knew that there was no special friend and no destiny. Brian, in the meantime, seemed full of himself, or at least the parts of him that weren't full of crap. But could it be that Brian was destined for great things, and was conscious of the fact? If so, she could help him out and take a vicarious joy in helping a man on his first step to greatness.

Her first effort, ironically, was against Elizabeth. The next day Joan saw her walking the halls, singing her own praises to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Suddenly reminded of the impromptu song contest that she had seen in a tape of CASABLANCA, Joan improvised a pro-Brian song on the spot, to the tune of My Country 'Tis of Thee. She and Elizabeth wound up almost literally in each other's faces.

That seemed to put a damper on Elizabeth's candidacy. But apparently she had been in it for the drama anyway, and thought the dueling songs made for a good finale. Besides, she was only a junior and would have another chance next year. So she pulled out and left the contest between Lars and Brian.

Between her fascination with Aunt Olive's past and speculations on Brian's future, Joan was happier than she had been for months, completely distracted from her own woes. Instead of a God who could do anything He liked because He had the power, she had found human beings who had accomplished a lot by their own efforts. Dr. Dan was right: she needed to get her mind off her imaginary Friend and appreciate the goodness of real people around her. And it was working.


	4. Feet of Clay

**Chapter 4 Feet of Clay**

One day at dinner Aunt Olive had talked about a tribe that ate a locust-based concoction that supposedly increased a man's virility -- a subject that revolted Joan but impressed the menfolk. She then got up to get a second helping of pie -- and fell to the floor unconscious.

At first Joan and others thought that the old woman may have tripped, and possibly banged her head on the floor. But Will, trained to recognize medical emergencies, realized that she had suffered a stroke. He immediately called 911 and summoned an ambulance to take her to the hospital.

Joan wasn't allowed to go, and it was hours before she had the diagnosis -- it was indeed a stroke, but not a fatal one. The damaged parts of the brain controlled motor nerves to the limbs, and even there the damage was limited; there were healthy neurons which might take over from the blighted ones, given therapy. The result would be a few week's lameness and weakness in the right arm. She would need care, and Helen was determined to give it.

None of this diminished Joan's respect for her aunt, of course. Instead it gave her a tragic air: an energetic spirit struck down by forces beyond her control. But Joan wasn't in a mood for tragedy, and she tried to focus more on school, with her twin idols Judith and Brian.

--

A few days later, a story started circulating at the school, that Brian's father had embezzled money from his employer and then fled Maryland with a girl who was probably involved in the theft as well.

The students of the school were no dummies. They had grown up in a degraded political environment where politicians found it easier to demonize their opponents than stress their unimpressive virtues. They could guess that the source of the story was Lars, or one of his supporters. They at first dismissed it as a lie, and even when fresh evidence circulated, they were unimpressed. Many had relatives they weren't too proud of, either.

But the story had a devastating effect on Brian himself, who apparently felt disgraced in everybody's eyes. Not only did he stop politicking in the halls, he even avoided meetings with his supporters to plan strategy. His campaign was basically imploding, and Lars' expanding to fill the gap.

"I hate what that bastard Lars did to Brian's pride," Joan complained to Judith soon afterward. "If only he had a Killing Heel of his own--"

"What? Oh, Achilles' Heel. I saw him sneak off-campus the other day," Judith said matter-of-factly. "He seemed pretty furtive."

"What do you think he was doing?"

"I don't know. Buying drugs, maybe?"

"And you haven't reported him to anybody?"

"Jojo, I got my own secrets, and other people can have theirs. But if it's important to you--" Judith had odd notions of privacy. Joan remembered an incident from the Camp.

_She came back to the room one evening in week 6 and found Judith on their shared computer. That didn't bother Joan until she looked over the other girl's shoulder and recognized the contents. "Hey! You're snooping in my diary!" _

_"Yeah, and a good thing too. Here you say you dreamed about that cute boy that you used to think was God."_

_"Well, I did."_

_"Jojo, you've GOT to manage the grownups better. Bringing up God again is a red flag; they'll be harassing you for the last two weeks. And associating God and sex is a real no-no."_

_"I didn't talk about sex."_

_"You said he was hot."_

_"Oh, that."_

_"I'm not changing anything, but I'd advice you to delete the dream. It's crucial to convince the grownups that you've _

_recovered. Otherwise you'll be bouncing from one form of Crazy Camp to another."_

_"Oh, if you're so smart, how did you wind up in Crazy Camp to begin with?"_

_"I got in a spot of trouble last spring," Judith said evasively. "My parents are both psychiatrists, and they had a colleague convince the judge that I needed counseling instead of punishment. Lesser of two evils. You gotta manage things."_

_Joan ended up deleting the entry on Cute Boy God. And for the last two weeks she watched in relief while the counselors focussed on unfortunate "problem cases" while leaving Joan alone. She was so relieved that she forgave Judith the snooping._

Judith agreed to call Joan on their cells if she saw Lars sneaking off again. Joan traded in her old model for a cell phone that could snap pictures. That might be handy in an emergency.

The call came about 1:30, as the first afternoon class let out. Lars apparently found the confusion in the hallways a good time to sneak away, but Judith spotted him anyway.

By the time Joan saw her friend, Judith was already trailing Lars. She seemed very good at sneaking around silently. Joan prudently stayed much further back to avoid being spotted.

Roughly a block away from school was a construction site, currently unmanned, as if the workers were taking a late lunch. Part of it had been dug up, to provide a basement or deep foundation for the future building. Lars walked down the makeshift ramp and was largely hidden from sight. Only when Joan caught up with Judith on the edge of the hole, and hid behind an earth mover, could she regain sight of him.

There was another guy, who looked like the school drug dealer, approaching Lars from the other end of the site, and they started talking in low tones. That fit the drug theory, except that they were showing little of the antagonistic bargaining that Joan would expect during an exchange of drugs and cash. Then the two approached and kissed.

Joan snapped a picture, then ran for her life, with a startled Judith following her. Lars was an athlete and, if he realized what Joan had done, could easily catch up to her and grab her cell. But apparently he was oblivious to what had happened. Joan finally found it safe to stop in the school playground, where she and Judith could talk in privacy.

"Got it," said Joan, checking the image. "Lars is perfectly recognizable. The other guy isn't, but you can tell that he IS a guy, which is the crucial thing.

"You're not going to show it around to people, are you?" asked Judith, looking uncharacteristically subdued.

"I'm going to show it to Lars, first, and see how he would like being the target of rumors. If he doesn't withdraw--"

"But that's homosexual blackmail."

"So what? If he had left me alone, I'd leave him alone. But his thugs beat up my brother, and that makes it personal. I suppose you can't understand that--"

"It's personal to me in other ways," Judith said. She looked around the schoolyard to make sure nobody was in listening distance. "Jojo, I think I'm gay."

"_What?"_ Joan had of course been aware of gossip, both at Camp and at school, about what "Joanith" really did. But she knew her own emotions, how she felt toward Judith vs how she felt toward Adam, and she thought she had known Judith's. Her notion of a lesbian was Grace with her rough manners and her butch haircut, and even there she suspected Grace's behavior was an act and that she had a boyfriend hidden somewhere.

"You do things with girls?"

"I hadn't done anything, actually. But I know how I feel. Boys leave me cold, but I find some girls beautiful. Particularly you, Jojo."

"That night when you watched me undress, and saw my bare butt--"

Judith turned red. "I'm not usually that coarse. It's not just your body. I love you for your soul, Jojo."

"I can't -- I can't --"

"Reciprocate. I know. You love Adam. It's OK." She kissed Joan lightly.

The image in her phone camera stayed in the camera.

--

Preoccupied with the mystery of Lars, Joan had paid little attention to home, but apparently tensions had been rising there. The independent Olive found she could not do what she wanted when she wanted, but was dependent on other people. She complained at dinner that Helen had been slow in bringing her a requested glass of water. Helen, who had been trying to balance her teaching job, her chores, and the care for both Kevin and Olive, finally snapped and shouted "I'm doing the best I can, you ungrateful _bitch!"_

Shock and confusion. Olive wheeled herself away from the table, followed by a contrite Helen. Will followed them, evidently deciding that the situation required a peacekeeper.

The three Girardi siblings remained at the table, half shocked at the blow-up and half amused that their straight-laced mother had been caught uttering a no-no. Joan and Luke found themselves looking to their elder brother Kevin for "adult" wisdom. "I suppose the thing to do is to let the grownups settle it among themselves, and be ready to help as needed."

Joan nodded, but Aunt Olive was no longer so glorious in Joan's sight.

--

When the time for the election came, few people voted, and those that did favored Lars. Vice-Principal Price nonetheless demanded that everybody attended a short assembly to recognize the victory -- then regretted it as Lars gave such a dramatic acceptance speech that everybody, even the teachers, forgot about the classes scheduled next week.

"I may have won the election," Lars said, "but my opponent had good ideas, and in particular the idea of helping students obtain valuable experience in part-time jobs. So I will make that the top of my agenda."

Cheers from the students likely benefit from the measure, plus many others startled by his frank respect for his opponent. Joan looked around for Brian, but couldn't find him. Apparently he was boycotting the assembly.

"Since I realize that implementing this program will be complex and time-consuming, I intended to resign from the school's football team."

Shock from the football team, and most of the sports fans, on realizing that in elevating their hero to the presidency, they had lost their best chance of winning any games this season. Luke, on the other hand, whispered, "Who'd have thought it? He's taking the program very seriously."

"One more change that I want to propose," went on Lars. "I understand that bullying is becoming a serious problem. I want to encourage the hall monitors to be more alert for cases of violence, and wish to ask the administration to increase the penalties, to a few days suspension at the least."

Grace was making a triumphant look toward the athletes, while Joan was examining her self. If she had followed through in her attempt at blackmail, Lars would have pulled out and this dramatic turnaround would not have taken place. She had Judith to thank for that.

Just where was Judith?

--

After the dramatic day at school, Joan went to the park to cool off. But seated in her favorite bench, with a doleful expression, was Helen.

"Mom! Who's staying with Aunt Olive?"

"Nobody. She's gone."

"Gone?" For a horrifying moment Joan thought that was a euphemism for death.

Her mother handed her a letter, an old-fashioned hand-written one. Joan read over it.

_"It's time to move on. The apartment in Manhattan is still occupied, but I've found a charming flat in Chinatown, whose landlord has agreed to attend to my temporary special needs, and a herbalist just around the corner. I'm going to set out for Greece, as soon as Dr. Chin gets the qi out of my liver."_

_Olive Lebenkurtz_

"We all know that it's not a matter of _qi_ to be cured by herbs," Helen said worriedly. "Aunt Olive is a sick woman, and needs decent medical care. It'll be my fault if she-- she--"

"No," Joan said firmly, finding herself in the rare position of advising her mother. "Aunt Olive cherishes her independence, and she was miserable recovering with us. If it wasn't the B-word, it would have been something else. If she does die, at least it will be while doing what she wants."

But was it Joan's ideal? The idea of throwing herself into a project at the risk of her life didn't appeal to her; she had done it once already when she had the ridiculous delusion that she was going to be the ministering angel to Ramsey. But neither would she run to cover at the first setback as Brian had done. It was a bad idea to pin your ideals to fallible people; it was the ideals themselves that mattered.

TBC


	5. The Way of Rebellion

**IN RECOVERY**

**Chapter 5 The Way of Rebellion**

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter is based on "Out of Sight" and "Dive", both of them taken out of the chronology the show put them in)_

"I'm so disillusioned," Joan said. It was her shift at the bookstore, but with no Sammy to harass her and no customers demanding her attention, she was free to talk to Judith. "Aunt Olive is just oblivious of her safety. Bryan is a wuss. Even my Mom lost it."

Judith looked up from the thick book she had found on one of the shelves. "The trouble with you, Jojo, is that you thought you found the perfect guy. God. Now you're expecting everybody else to measure up to a standard that didn't exist. I'd say I've found only one perfect person in my life."

"Who's that?"

"You."

"That's a laugh. I'm a loser, the girl from Crazy Camp."

"You're not a loser, Jojo. Your only problem is that a germ got to your brain and screwed it up for a while. That's nothing to feel guilty about. S-- happens. In fact, that's probably where the germs came from."

"Ugh."

"Do people fell guilty or unworthy if they catch colds?"

"Is that really a good comparison?"

"Of course it is. My parents are psychiatrists. They say mental illness is like any other, just more complicated to cure."

"If you say so. What's that book you're reading? Not porn again, is it?"

_She remembered how, on one occasion, Judith had managed to smuggle a package of pornographic DVDs into the camp. She seemed less interested in the porn itself than in her coup in doing something forbidden under the administrators' noses. When she suggested passing them out to other girls, Joan put her foot down._

_"These aren't normal, well-balanced girls. Don't you know why some of the girls got here? Some were molested, one outright raped. How are they going to react if they come across these and see women treated as sex objects? Some might panic, some might actually go and do likewise, some might go deeper in their new roses. Do you want that on your conscience?"_

_Judith hadn't thought of that, and she agreed to keep the DVDs hidden away. Eventually she started grumbling that her supplier wouldn't take them back, and she took them out in the woods and buried them so they wouldn't be found in their room after the camp finished._

But in the present, she shook her head._ "_It's LORD OF THE RINGS."

"Doesn't sound like your style."

"It isn't. But everybody's talking about it, so I guess I better be able to, in order to fit in. I just wish everybody was talking about a shorter book--"

"Yeah. But there are other ways of fitting in. Ever thought of giving a party?"

"Yeah, but I'm the sort of person that throws a party and nobody shows up. Unless -- hmmm --"

--

When Joan got home, her parents gave her some unwinding time, but finally they called her down to the living room.

"Joan, we need to talk," said Will.

"I didn't do it," said Joan.

"Didn't do what?"

"Whatever you're about to accuse me of."

"There are no accusations, Joan," said her mother. "It's just -- we hear that there's a girl named Judith Montgomery."

"Yeah, Judith exists."

"She got in a lot of trouble in her old neighborhood. So much that her parents found it necessary to move out and come to Arcadia. People say--"

"I don't care what they say."

"All right. It's just that we don't think it's a good idea for you to associate with her."

"Too late."

"Huh?"

"We roomed together for four weeks at Crazy Camp."

"You did?" asked Will. "But you never told us--"

"Never told you what? You dumped me in a camp full of crazy girls, ruining a whole summer of my life, and when I finally found a friend that made it tolerable, you guys decide two months later that you don't approve of my company. Make up your minds, people."

"Don't take that tone with us, young lady," admonished Helen.

"Or what? You'll say that I'm an ungrateful bitch?"

Helen went white as her words were repeated back to her, and Joan took the opportunity to go up the stairs.At the top, out of sight from the parents below, she listened to the consequences.

"Let it slide, Helen," said her father's voice. "Maybe she can't help it; poor thing, that damned disease on top of adolescent hormones."

"Yeah, that camp didn't work out the way we hoped. Not only is she still a bit volatile, but she resents having been sent there in the first place."

"She's always been volatile, throwing herself into projects and then losing interest. The chess game, the cheerleading, the boat--"

"Now, now, you and Kevin are a bit crazy about the boat yourselves," teased Helen.

"The main question is, what about the Montgomery girl?"

"We better wait and see. Maybe Joan's fascination for her will fade, like all her other enthusiasms. Or maybe Joan will be a good influence on her, rather than vice versa."

"I don't like that idea. She tried to be a "good influence" on that misfit boy last year, and nearly ended up being raped, or shot. But the Montgomery girl is scarcely that bad. I agree, wait and see."

Joan fumed. So that parents thought her deepest impulses were just hormones? Well, at least they were adopting a laissez-faire attitude, which was fine with Joan.

And just why had she been so obsessed with that stupid Boat?

--

The school had a new swimming pool, and a few days later the students were all asked to bring their bathing suits to school to practice. Joan was a bit embarrassed about how much hers revealed. At Crazy Camp it had been okay -- everybody had breasts -- but this was a co-ed class where the boys got a kick out of seeing the girls' décolletage. At least her tic bite was no longer noticeable on her leg. Grace, Joan noticed, called in sick that day. On the other hand, Judith was wearing an item so skimpy that the Price, had he seen it, would probably have sent her home. Seeing that reminded Joan of an unpleasant incident at camp, the beginning of the final week.

_When Joan got back after a late session working on her lamps, she found a note on Judith's bunk. Just 4 words:_

Gone swimming. Don't snitch.

_They had of course banned Judith from the swimming pool for the season, and taken her bathing suit to enforce the ban. She must be swimming in her undies, or borrowed a bathing suit from another girl her size. One thing was clear: Joan was not going to snitch. Instead she took the note to the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet. If asked, she could deny knowing anything of Judith's activities._

_Some of Judith's cynicism was rubbing off on Joan._

_Joan was working on her diary for the psychologists when she heard girls talking in the hallway outside._

_"She really did it?"_

_"Yeah, everybody's there to watch. Bring your camera phone."_

_"You think the Girardi knows? Those two do everything together. Maybe even--"_

_"Nah, she'd wet her pants at the idea."_

_"But she wouldn't be wearing pants--"_

_Curious, Joan waited a minute for the hall to clear, then went out. The girls from her dorm were walking toward the swimming pool, and they weren't the only ones._

_The pool was surrounded with a fence and locked gate, as always. Standing inside was Judith, naked and very wet. Obviously she had been skinny-dipping._

_Judith's jeans and T-shirt were sitting on a near-by bench with her underwear, but she was making no attempt to put them on, or to hide part of herself by jumping back in the pool. She was enjoying the spectacle she was creating._

_"Get dressed and come out, Montgomery," demanded the head counselor._

_"Don't wanna. Come in and get me. But, oh dear, I've got the key." She held up the little metal object mockingly._

_The head counselor turned to an assistant. "Get the spare from the main office."_

_"You don't need to do that," one of the girls. "I can manage it." She took a bobby pin from her hair and stuck in the padlock. After a few seconds' manipulation, the lock fell open. Presumably the girl's skill at picking locks had something to do with why she was in Crazy Camp, but the counselors were so relieved that they didn't bring up the matter._

_The head counselor stepped forward a bit, then stopped, somewhat bewildered as to what to do next. Judith spelled it out. "What, are you going to drag me across the camp bare-assed? There are girls here with cameras. Suppose a pic ended up in a tabloid. People might--"_

_"Judith, STOP IT!" yelled Joan._

_"Huh?_

_"You've made your point. You got to skinny-dip. You've made a stand. Now get dressed and get out of there before you do something you really regret later." Judith might think this was fun at the moment, but Joan had spent a year meditating on the nature of ripples, and that image still seemed powerful to her, even leaving out the God hallucinations. What if phone-pictures of her friend ended up on the Internet, or surfaced years later when Judith was trying to lead a respectable life?_

_"Yes, Jojo," she said meekly. She turned to walk to the bench with her clothes. A couple of girls positioned themselves to take pictures of her rear with their phone-cameras. Joan felt like slugging them, but this was really Judith's fault._

"Joan?" asked her brother's voice in real time.

"Yeah?"

"Which diving board are you going to use?"

There were two boards, the low-dive and high-dive. Students were allowed to pick which they wanted to use.

"The low one, of course. I'm no expert."

"I'd like to use the low one, but I'm afraid I'll have to use the high one."

"You're not the macho kind of guy, Luke."

"No, but I am a guy," he said miserably.

When it was Luke's turn he climbed up to the high dive, walked out to the end, contemplated the water several yards below -- then reversed course. Everybody burst out laughing except Joan and Adam. Judith stopped her laughter when Joan glared at her.

"Are you sure you're not a girl?" taunted a boy. "Maybe we should call you Lucy instead of Luke. Lucy, Lucy, I love Lucy!"

"Think girls are wusses, eh?" Joan said angrily. "But we can do this." And she pushed the mocker into the pool. He had apparently been drawing a breath for another insult just then, so he wound up inhaling some water and sputtering.

Naturally the coach sent her to Price's office. But for once Joan was proud enough of her rebellion to sail through that ordeal. And when she got out, her brother was waiting outside the office.

"That was cool of you to back me up, Joan," he said. "I owe you one."

"Could you owe me two?"

"What two?"

"Number one, don't tell the parents." Fortunately this was one of Helen's days off from art class.

"Cool."

"And number two, bring friends to Judith's party. I'm not sure how many people are going to come."

Luke's face fell, but he promised.

--

Joan need not have worried about Judith's party. The parents, who would have been a drag, were out of town, winding up some business affairs in their former town ( and Joan, though supposedly one of Judith's best friends, seemed to be the last to hear of their absence). A large part of the student body, and even some college-age kids, had shown up to enjoy a party un-chaperoned by any adults. Though Luke had dutifully brought his friends along -- Grace, Friedmann, Glynis, and a few others -- they were almost unnoticed in the crowd.

What was plentiful was alcohol. Some of it recognizable like beer cans, but Judith was carrying an unlabeled flask around, and even offered it to Joan.

Joan had drunk wine as some fancy Italian-American meals, but with an Italian attitude: that wine was part of the food. Otherwise she had little experience of alcohol. It wasn't just being the daughter of a cop determined to enforce the law. It was also the fact that, in her mind and in Luke's, alcohol was associated with the auto accident that had cost her brother the use of his legs.

But Joan didn't have to worry about designated driving or any sort of responsibility tonight, so she let Judith talk into taking a few drinks. At first there was almost a repulsive kick to it. A few minutes later, she was seeing things in a rosy glow. Crazy Camp -- no problem. The hallucinations, the stigma -- no problem. Feet of clay -- no problem.

She spotted Adam sitting on a sofa, his back to her. Why not take advantage? She walked over and leaned over the sofa back, kissing his cheek.

"You're drunk," he said in surprise.

"Nah, just having fun." She crossed over to kiss his other cheek.

"Quit hanging over me like that, Jane."

"Don't like that position? Let's try this." She circled around the sofa, sat on his lap, and threw her arms around him.

"Stop that, Jane."

"What's wrong?" She asked, mood-swinging. "Don't you love me anymore?"

"Of course I do. But this isn't you. You shouldn't have let Judith talk you into drinking so much."

"But she knows what's best for me. We're Joanif. We're inseper-perable."

"I think you better find a way to separate."

"You hate Judif!" yelled Joan.

"I didn't say that -- I only --"

Some genuine emotion started cutting through the maudlinity. "This summer, I didn't know whether I was insane or not, and Judith was the only one who cared."

"I'm glad she was there for you, then. But why do you have to turn yourself into somebody else? You're Jane."

For some reason the old endearment irritated Joan. "I'm not Jane, I'm Joan!"

"Whatever. I'm leaving. I'll be back when you're you again." He headed toward the door.

Joan tried to follow him, but a big crowd got in the way, and her footing was unsteady. "Adam! Adam!". Eventually she got to the door and looked around. Compared to the brightness of the party lights, the night darkness was almost opaque. "Adam! Adam!"

No sign of him, and all of Joan's emotions went into reverse. She had lost him forever! There was nothing she could do about it. She was all alone in an existential, Godless world. She found a relatively empty corner, sat on the floor, and started to cry.

She was still crying when the ambulances came and the paramedics crashed the party.

--

At the hospital visitors' room, Luke and Mom forced her to drink a lot of coffee. The combination of liquids overloading her system forced her to visit the restroom in a hurry, but her mind was clearing.

Luke had apparently avoided the temptation to drink, saying Grace had talked him out of it. Joan hadn't known Grace had that much influence over what Luke did. But Grace was the hero of the occasion. She had found Judith on the bathroom floor, passed out, and she immediately called 911. The doctors had diagnosed alcohol poisoning.

Joan herself had a terrible headache. But compared to what had happened to Judith, she knew better than to complain. She felt better when Adam came to the hospital. He hadn't lost his love for her at all; he had merely been distressed to see his "Jane" drunk. He explained that it brought up unpleasant memories of another loved one who had had a drinking problem, and the image was too much for him. Joan assumed that he was talking about his dead mother, and didn't pry further.

Will came out of the emergency area, looking stern.

"I wish I could run somebody in for encouraging teenagers to go on drinking binges," he said angrily, "but the Montgomery girl has suffered enough, and I can't find who else to blame in particular. So let me just say this, Joan."

"I don't usually talk about my work," he went on. "No need to burden the family. But for several days I've been investigating a wanton murder. A ten-year-old boy in a slum got in the way of a street gang doing their thing, and got shot to death. For days I tried to get identification on the shooters, but nobody in the neighborhood wanted to risk retaliation from the gang. Finally one woman had a crisis of conscience and told me what we needed to know. I promised that the police would protect her. But my supervisor Lucy was reluctant to spend money, damn her, and by the time I got the protection arranged, somebody had killed the witness. Two senseless deaths, an innocent and a heroine. While you--"

Joan understood immediately what he meant. That it was a brutal world, one from which she had been sheltered, and that she had been foolish to let a few disappointments prod her into a sense of rebellion. "I'm sorry, Dad. And when Judith recovers, she'll feel the same way."

He snorted. "We'll see about Judith."

TBC


	6. The Way of Normalcy

**IN RECOVERY**

**Chapter 6 The Way of Normalcy**

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is based on the first half of FRIDAY NIGHT. In the series Judith is suddenly on good terms with Joan's family, and I tried to flesh out the transition.)_

Joan and Luke were grounded, of course. Their parents' rule was to leave a party if it all possible, if drinks and drugs got involved. In Luke's case Joan thought it a bit unfair, since he had refrained from the drinking and it wasn't clear why he had stayed.

But Joan's real worry was Judith. Her parents already disapproved of the girl based on reputation; now that there was a definite offense to point to, Joan worried if she would ever be allowed to see her friend again.

Then something astonishing happened: Judith won over Will.

Joan didn't know the details. Her Dad had gone into Judith's hospital room for a private talk, using the non-arrest as an excuse. He refused to give details of the talk; he saw it as sort of a secular version of going to confession. But Will had dealt with a lot of juvenile delinquents during his years on the police force, and thought he had an instinct for telling the bad apples apart from the superficially damaged ones. Judith, he thought, was redeemable.

Shortly before Judith's release, Joan had a private conversation with her and got her side.

"It used to seem like a game," Judith explained. "Some grownup would try to hem me in, I'd try to get out of the straitjacket, and we'd see who won. It was nothing deeper than that. The fact that both my parents are shrinks made it easy. I'd learn the different syndromes and pretend that I was suffering from them, and they'd let things slide. But, my God, I could have died a couple of days ago. I realize that some of the rules are there for a reason."

And from that moment on, Judith began a rather frightening campaign to Be Normal. Follow the rules and the universe would play fair with you. Joan herself had her doubts about the simple approach. Little Rocky had died, for no particular reason. Kevin had had some responsibility for his accident, but his suffering was disproportionate.

Back when Joan had the delusion of being friends with God, she had thought it odd that her Friend wouldn't prevent such tragedies -- which probably should have been a hint that she was delusional. Now she just took it for granted that the universe was unfeeling and amoral. Judith was, in essence, playing another game.

But Joan kept her mouth shut about that. The alcohol-poisoning incident had scared her, and if Judith's game deterred her from making similar mistakes, fine.

On one of the first days after Judith's return to school there was an incident that made it seem Judith's plan was failing. Joan was walking along a corridor and saw, in the distance, Judith talking to some guy that Joan didn't know. He was showing Judith some sort of card, and Judith slugged him. It was not a traditional don't-be-fresh slap, but a heavy blow that knocked him against the lockers. It got the attention of one of the hall monitors, the corps that Lars had set up to prevent school bullying.

"Is something wrong?"

"Nah," said the boy with the card, straightening himself up.

"Everything's OK," said Judith, walking off and leaving the monitor looking frustrated.

Judith's course took her toward Joan, but she looked startled when Joan actually walked up and spoke to her. She was more rattled by the encounter than she let on. "What was that about?"

Judith shrugged. "He wanted to have sex with me. Really, even if I went for boys, I'd have better taste than accept him. Let's forget about it."

In physics class, Ms. Lischak was her usual histrionic self. Today she had brought in some lightweight balls, and was juggling with them. "Juggling is usually considered something trivial. But it requires a knowledge of dynamics, knowing how a ball will move, and the juggler must move his or her own body to match. Normally it's instinctive, of course, but the motion can be analyzed an exercise in geometry. Who wants an extra credit project?"

"Let me!" yelled Judith. Her grades were, not surprisingly, in the cellar, and obviously she saw this as her last chance to pull them up. Lischak looked startled but agreed to let Judith be one of the researchers.

Judith's volunteering got the attention of some of Joan's friends who usually ignored her. Luke spoke up. "I've read that in studies of motion, researches will attach lights to the moving objects and film them in the dark. That way you'll have a visible geometric image to study."

"Thanks, Luke, but wouldn't that throw the balls out of balance?"

Friedmann tried to make an irrelevant reference to HAMLET, which everybody ignored.

"I once did an artwork involving glowing balls," said Adam. "Maybe I can find them again."

"That would be sweet of you, Adam," said Joan, kissing him. The kiss got Judith's attention.

Joan had of course told Judith about Adam during the summer. Now that she knew her friendship with God was a delusion, the love affair was the most pleasant memory of the past, particularly in contrast with the dreariness of Crazy Camp. But after Judith had told Joan that she was a lesbian, Joan had stopped discussing him, feeling that Judith wouldn't relate.

Now, however, Judith seemed fascinated with the affair. At first she asked if Joan was planning to go to bed with her boyfriend any time soon, and when the embarrassed Joan insisted that their feelings were more idealistic than that, Judith went the opposite extreme, and urged them to go on a formal date. That, after all, was the Normal thing to do for a couple who were serious about each other. And so somehow Joan and Adam found themselves committed to have dinner at Arcadia's fanciest restaurant on a particular Friday night in November.

That afternoon Judith came to the Girardi house to help Joan pick the proper dress, though Judith herself was still clad in blue jeans. Will and Helen, who had once tried to exclude her from Joan's life, welcomed her, apparently feeling nothing could go wrong from an open visit, and Judith was careful to treat them with formal respect (she referred to her own mother as "Fran")

"I wish I knew what Adam was wearing," said Joan, standing in her room in a slip and staring at the various dresses on the bed. "I want to look like we fit."

Judith picked up one dress. "Oh, you'll fit with this. That I'll guarantee."

"Did you dress HIM?" asked Joan, startled. It created an odd image, but after all she knew that they had no interest in each other.

"Have you ever known a guy who can dress himself, unless it's for swimming or for bed?" quipped Judith, trying to keep the conversation light. She picked up another dress. "Try that. Then I'll can do something with your hair, and maybe then do your boobs--"

Startled, Joan stared at her friend. The Freudian slip spoke volumes. She knew that Judith was gay of course, and that her attraction to Joan might be partly sexual -- she remembered the night she had caught Judith ogling her rear after the shower. But was it possible that under the Normal façade, Judith had sexual fantasies about doing things with Joan, things she knew would never happen in real life? Was encouraging Adam a sort of vicarious way of winning Joan?

"It's a joke," Judith said unconvincingly, and Joan decided to try to forget it. Tonight was a date, an idealized courtship ritual. Keep it on that level.

She hastily donned the dress over the slip.

--

Joan tried very hard to enjoy the date, but the occasion, which should have been "special" simply seemed alien. She was used to seeing Adam either negligent of his appearance or deliberately putting on an "artistic" impression; either way he looked out of place in a coat and tie. She was also conscious of how much this was costing him and wished that she could help out of her bookstore wages, which were higher than his. Hearing Adam commit a faux pas making an order and Joan, who was used enough to Italian restaurants to know the etiquette and terminology, was embarrassed.

She felt stiff as well. She wanted to snuggle up with Adam and kiss him, but they were separated by a large table. When she tried to lean forward, she remembered a family legend about her mother's hair had caught fire from the candle during an early date, and that ruined Joan's mood.

And in back of everything else was the realization that Judith was in love with an unattainable girl and would never know even the happiness that Joan was experiencing now.

RRRRING.

The sound of the cell tune sounded odd among the formal surroundings. Joan's hand instinctively reached for her jeans pocket, but she remembered that she was wearing neither jeans nor a pocket tonight. She got the phone out of her purse. Fortunately the person at the other end had persisted and continued to ring, for reasons which soon seemed obvious.

"Hello?"

"Hello, this is your Mom." Helen's voice sounded very tense. "I'm sorry to interrupt you during your date, but an emergency has come up --

"Dad? Has Dad been hurt?" There was the nightmare the family always thought of: Will losing his life while doing his duty.

"No, no, Will is OK. It's Judith. She's been stabbed."

TBC


	7. End of the Road

**IN RECOVERY**

**Chapter 7 End of the Road**

Joan wished that she had the Lyme Disease back. Because, if she had, then she could dismiss all of this as a sick fantasy. She'd wake up in the morning and Judith would be fine, not lying in Intensive Care seriously wounded.

Adam had stayed with her ever since they were interrupted at their date. Mom was there; Will was there in a double capacity, as Joan's Dad and as a cop trying to solve a crime. Kevin was out reporting on some other case, and Luke was apparently out with Friedmann at some sci-fi marathon. But none of that mattered. Judith was hurt, and under the most sordid circumstances: in an attempt to buy drugs in an alley. Why? She had promised Joan that she had put all that behind her.

There was no sense to anything. No guiding intelligence behind the universe. As the grafitti said, S-- Happened. How had she ever believed otherwise?

A doctor appeared. "Is one of you named Jojo?"

"Me."

"She's been asking for you. You can come, but don't wear her out."

She was in the hospital bed, a shell of herself. The wound itself was hidden under her gown and sheets, but one could tell the effects by the pallor of her skin and the stillness of the normally vigorous girl. She was wrapped in various tubes and wires; Joan had a crazy notion that they were tying her to life, and that in their absence she could sink into --

"How was it?" Judith asked faintly, focusing on Adam.

"The date? It was fine," Joan lied.

"Just fine?" Judith asked, as if they were walking down a school corridor exchanging girl talk. Maybe she was confused, and oblivious of the current situation. If so, Joan hoped that she stayed oblivious.

But Adam asked: "Why did you do it, Judith? Didn't you know it was dangerous?"

For once in her life Joan wanted to slug Adam, even though she knew where he was coming from. His mother had killed herself, and he had spent years wondering why and whether it was his fault. This time he wanted to know -- which implied that he thought Judith was also going to --

"Phone pic," muttered Judith. "Bare ass. Internet."

Suddenly Joan understood what had happened. Some of the girls of Crazy Camp had snapped pictures of the naked Judith during her antics at the swimming pool. Somehow one of the pictures had fallen into the hands of students at the school, students who wanted drugs. They had used it to blackmail Judith into taking them to a supplier she knew of. If she had refused them, they would have posted her picture on the Internet and everybody in the city could find out with a click what her bare bottom looked like.

To Adam, though, it must have sounded like delirium, and potentially embarrassing, with the reference to a girl's private anatomy. He slipped out, and for once, Joan was happy to see him go.

But when she turned back to her friend, Judith uttered the one word that Joan had been dreading. "Dying."

"NO!"

"And it's first time -- I wanted to live."

Joan could not take it any longer. She dashed out into the hallway, not to follow Adam, but simply to be alone. But not entirely alone.

_Please, come back. I need You, really need You. I don't care if it means being crazy again. I'm sick of being well. I can't manage this without You._

"I am here, Joan," said a Voice.

She turned around to see a man, dark-skinned and clad as a doctor. He spoke with a deep base voice and a decided accent.

Vast relief washed over Joan as Doctor God entered Judith's special ward. If this was a hallucination, she wanted it to last forever.

She waited a moment, long enough for Him to carry out the healing. Then Joan returned to Intensive Care. She knew that there were supposed to be nurses keeping her out, protecting the patient, but nobody stopped her. God was opening all the doors.

Yet Judith was still lying on the bed, wrapped in tubes, and paler than ever.

"Why haven't You fixed her up?" Joan demanded angrily.

"Don't, Jojo," said Judith. It was odd: her voice sounded strong now, able to talk in complete sentences, even when the rest of her was still a mess. God had done something; why hadn't he done everything? "Don't piss off the only doctor I like. He loves me."

"It is difficult not to love such a beautiful person," said God.

"See?" asked Judith.

_She knows Who it is. How? Did He tell her, or did she somehow intuit it? And why isn't she cured now?_

"I will leave you two together now," God said unexpectedly, drifting out.

Joan wanted to follow, to demand what the hell was going on here, but Judith's voice called "Jojo!"

"Yes?"

"Juggle."

"_What?_ With what?"

Judith's eyes darted back and forth. "Bandages there."

There were there wrapped bandages on the shelf that could work as makeshift balls. Joan tried to juggle, but her concentration was elsewhere, and she started dropping them. But Judith smiled. "I love you, Jojo."

Her eyes gazed on Joan. Then they gradually became unfixed, unseeing, and the heart monitor, which Joan had been tuning out, flatlined and began sounding an alarm.

Judith was dead.

Nurses and doctors poured into the room. One nurse pushed Joan out the door, as gently as possible. Joan was oblivious to all that. All she could tell was that Judith was gone, and God had betrayed her -- if he had ever really been there. She let out a primal scream and kept that up until she passed out, and consciousness mercifully left her.

TBC


	8. The Way Back

**IN RECOVERY**

**Chapter 8 THE WAY BACK**

Saturday afternoon, and Joan was still lying on her bed, trying to make sense of everything. She wouldn't let anybody in, not even to deliver breakfast or lunch. Downstairs, she knew, her family was frightened for her, wondering if her shock would bring on a "relapse" and a return of her "emotional problems". Joan could not build the energy to explain. She had never told them about her God visions, and she certainly could not make coherent sense of them now.

Last night she had gotten with some other teens to commiserate, but there wasn't really much sharing of emotion. Luke and Grace had never cared much for Judith herself, but they were both stunned at the realization that not everybody made it to adulthood; that a teen like them could get cut off with her life unfulfilled. Friedmann's feelings went somewhat deeper, but his Judith had been basically an image of his own imagination. He had never known Judith's soul as Joan had.

Eventually Joan drifted off to sleep.

--

She was standing before Joan, naked, but the effect was utterly unlike the skinny-dipping incident at the camp. Earlier the nudity had been embarrassing; a girl caught with her pants down. Yet now the effect seemed to be totally natural, as if this were her true form and clothes would simply be a disguise or mask.

There was no sign of the stab wound that had cost her life. She looked, in fact, perfectly healthy -- with the emphasis on PERFECT.

"Judith! But it can't be -- God didn't save you."

"But He did, Jojo. Just not in the sense you're thinking. A violent death is a terrible thing, but He helped me through it, for your sake. He loves you, Jojo."

"Where are you now?" The scene behind Judith was totally familiar: it was the school swimming pool. But Joan could tell that it was just that: a scene, a prop. Something for Joan to see, because Judith's real surroundings wouldn't make sense to Joan. After all, she was quite used to the notion of God cloaking his essence behind illusions like a little girl.

"That's hard to say. After all, I haven't even been here a full day. Let's just call it the afterlife."

"What's it like?"

"Cool. No greed, no malice. Nobody makes drugs and weapons to victimize other people. You always know the right thing to do. I understand now that I should have stood up to the blackmailers, put up with the embarrassment of being seen naked. After all, the skinny-dipping had been my choice. and the rest was bad ripples. It's all clear now."

"Sounds awesome. Maybe I should join you." Her father had a police gun hidden somewhere in the house. Or maybe it would be easier to climb up to the roof and--

"No -- no -- NO! Jojo. Don't even THINK of doing away with yourself. Life's a precious gift. It's the only part of your existence where you have free will. Here, it's Her will that controls everything."

The change in the divine gender didn't throw Joan. She had, after all, dealt with an Old Lady God and Little Girl God. Obviously He had chosen a female image to deal with Judith, who didn't like boys.

"What happens if you disagree with Her? Do you get thrown into--?"

"No. You usually understand the reasons for what She wants, and they're always good reasons.. At worst you just get real frustrated. I hear there's a Place you can go to get away from Her from a while, but not many souls do that."

Joan wondered how long the free-spirited Judith would accept her position, but she kept her mouth shut. Right now the girl was relieved that she still existed and was impressed by the novelty of the situation. Don't ruin her happiness.

"But this is leading to something important," Judith went on. "Jojo, please go back to working for Her. Of your own free will."

"NO. As long as I thought She didn't exist, things seemed to make sense. But now that I know that She does, I need a lot of explanations first. Why did She let me get so sick? Why did She let me think I was seeing things when She could have proved her existence? Was this some kind of sadistic test -- turn against me and see if I stay faithful? I'm Joan, not Job. Or just to rub in the fact that She doesn't think she owes me anything? Because all of that HURT."

"I don't have all the answers, Jojo, but I have a vague idea of how She does things. The Lyme Disease was just a natural process, and you know She doesn't like interfering with those. Excrement happens--"

"Can't you say the S-word anymore?" asked Joan, amused in spite of her annoyance.

"It wouldn't be appropriate. It makes it sound evil, degrading, when it is really just a natural process. Just like your infection. You got bit by a horse tick, it had germs inside, and they migrated to your brain and messed things up for a while. As for Her staying away from you -- isn't that what you wanted?"

"WHAT?"

"You've always resented when She or He shows up, right? Didn't like being different."

"Well--"

"God was giving you your life back. She couldn't take away your memories, that's one of the restrictions she imposes on Herself. But She arranged things so that you could tell yourself that visions were a delusion, brought on by a disease, and that you were basically a normal girl who had never gotten tangled up with God.."

"But I DID like the missions. I think -- I don't know. I feel so muddled."

"You're ambivalent. Nothing to be ashamed of. You don't get all the right answers laid out like I do. But now you have a choice. Say no, and She will never bother you again. I'm just a dream -- after all you don't talk to bare-breasted friends in real life, do you? Or say yes and accept that you have a special role in the world. And you don't have to decide immediately. She has all eternity to wait."

Joan thought back over the last few months, and realized that there had been a void in her life. She had been scrambling to fill it, picking up one project after another, and none of them had worked. When she had missions she had felt she had meaning in her life. She wasn't sure what the meaning was, but she knew that only through the missions would she find it.

"Yes. Tell Her to come back."

Judith smiled, and walked up to Joan. Hugging a naked girl whom she knew to be a lesbian was rather weird, but this was just a dream, and Joan doubted Freud was involved. She kissed her friend.

Judith turned away toward the high-dive, and Joan said, "ulp--".

"Yeah?"

"Ghosts don't have to go to the bathroom, do they?"

"Nope."

"So why do you still have a -- um -- back there?"

Judith twisted around, apparently trying to look at her own rear, but wasn't disembodied enough to manage it. "Don't know. It's like asking why I've still got my boobs here, when I'm never going to have and nurse a baby. Seems rather low-priority, given the other revelations I'm getting."

But Joan thought she'd love to see "Her" face when Judith asked the question, no matter which image God was using at the time.

Judith climbed to the top and walked out on the board. "Bye, Jojo. I don't know what's in store, but I'll try to get back soon for visits. I love you."

"I love you, Judith."

Judith bounced off the board and dove expertly toward the water. She was, after all, a skilled swimmer. But before she touched the surface she seemed to explode into a beautiful sunburst of light, and was gone.

But she was still alive in Joan's heart, and so was God.

THE END.


End file.
